Another anonymous request asked for a "terrestrial placoderm":
Keluphichthys pezoporus is a descendant of Bothriolepis-like Devonian placoderms. Inhabiting shallow freshwater environments, they often used their rigid jointed fins to scramble short distances over land to reach new isolated ephemeral pools, and they developed convergently lung-like structures that could exchange gases directly from air, allowing them to survive in poorly-oxygenated waters and make even longer terrestrial journeys.
While the end-Devonian extinction devastated all other placoderms, this odd lineage survived into the Carboniferous, eventually raising themselves up to walk fully on their two limbs using a heavily scaled tail for balance.
Due to the relative weight of its bony carapace Keluphichthys is a fairly small animal, standing about 10cm tall (~4"). Its high domed body shape allows it to right itself when overturned, and resists the bite forces of larger predators such as the early tetrapods it lives alongside.
Its jaws are protrusible, with bony blades fused into a serrated "beak" used to snatch up invertebrate prey.
It's still reliant on wet environments, needing to stay moist and returning to pools of water in order to reproduce. Juveniles start out aquatic and gradually transition to terrestrial habits as they mature.
What if... (HUGE ORIGINAL SKETCHES SPOILERS AHEAD)
...the omegaham was an extremely-derived daggoth?
The Late Terminocene, 500+ million years P.E.
The final epoch of HP-02017 has come to its end. Long ago, it was a lush and thriving world, but now it is no longer.
Only the most extreme of lifeforms have survived the end of days, as the climate grew more and more uninhabitable. The planet was now in an irreversible spiral of desertification, and soon, as its oceans grew ever smaller and saltier, and as forests and grasslands gave way to arid desert, the survivors would be only the most bizarre creatures ever to walk the planet.
One lineage, the saharats, would soldier on. Descended from daggoths, whose anatomy was so peculiar they were scarcely recognizable as rodents, or even vertebrates, their ability to endure the heat, need little food and water, and bear hundreds of microscopic, quasi-larval young that could remain dormant in dessication-proof sacs and halt their development until conditions became favorable, allowed them to survive the apocalyptic environment. They, at this point, are the last surviving clade of hamsters.
But one very unusual group began taking on a remarkable evolutionary route. To reduce its surface area exposed to the blistering heat, it would develop a dense coat of heat-reflecting hair that protected its skin both from intense sun and the chill of night. Its nasal tendrils would greatly reduce to small lobes that covered its nostrils and mouth to reduce the loss of moisture, and its limbs would become smaller, with four appendages in particular becoming larger and the primary organs of propulsion. For traction these would develop lateral fleshy pads that, over time, would develop keratinous pseudo-claws to enable it to grasp food and grip the ground in conjunction with the main true claw as it foraged. A pair of large, hairless flanges on its head acted as heat sinks to help it regulate its temperature, and, due to its crepuscular habits, its rows of numerous ocelli would eventually fuse into two large light-sensitive aggregate structures, which could be covered over by flaps of skin to keep out damage and irritation by particles of sand or excess light.
This successful design would end up outliving the rest of the daggoths, after a period of sudden extremes followed by a brief respite of the heat would cause a mass extinction of the remaining species, but allow the one lucky survivor to briefly flourish.
And, over half a billion years later, the only species left was...a hamster.
It looked almost identical to one, and was genetically one. Yet, had one been able to observe it inside, everything within was uncannily wrong. Its skull was mishappen by flanges and fenestrae that supported the muscles of its facial tendrils. Its eyes were devoid of sockets, but instead bore a series of miniscule pits from the nerve cords of its numerous now-fused ocelli. Its limbs were fingers, attached to the wrists and ankles of limbs now but all gone. Even on the outside, this species was unlike its bygone kin in strange ways. Its numerous ocelli flaps, closing in unison, made its eyes close and open in a disconcerting zipper-like fasion. Its fleshy "nose" and "lips" could peel apart in three fused lobes to reveal its true nose and mouth. And it reproduced by producing great numbers of dessication-resistant pods containing tiny undeveloped young less that a few millimeters long, more akin to a fish or crustacean spawning roe than anything resembling live birth.
500+ million years in the future, at the end of it all, one species holds on defiantly, for as long as it can in the face of the final extinction. A creature that, on the surface looks almost identical to the primordial progenitor of all this planet's fauna from beginning to end: but also one so intrinsically and incomprehensibly different, a hidden testament to its evolutionary ancestry spanning unfathomable stretches of deep time.
A very late Spectember entry, but I was inspired by @alphynix 's "Dicyny World" where archosaurs and cynodonts never got to take over and the planet was instead dominated by the descendants of the dicynodont Lystrosaurus (which was famous for dominating in the aftermath of the Great Dying that ended the Permian).
So here's a bunch of random species, playing around with the idea of dicynodonts having superficial or convergent features of mammals, squamates and birds to fill niches similar to all of those, as well as the idea that drab coloration and color-blindness in mammals were a side effect of their nocturnal Mesozoic ancestry so other synapsids could probably be quite colorful.
Clockwise from top:
• The Tookey, an arboreal species adapted for climbing, similar to primates, squirrels and the arboreal synapsid Suminia, that feeds on leaves, seeds and insects in the treetops, using prehensile paws and a balancing tail to navigate among the branches.
• The Tuskbird, part of a pterosaur-like flying clade. This species is mostly ground-dwelling, however, similar to galliform birds, with males sporting brightly-colored iron-rich tusks for display. They eat primarily seeds, which they crack open with their short, blunt bills, as well as other plant matter.
• The Goliphant, a megafaunal herbivore that grazes on low-lying vegetation such as ferns and shrubs and grass-equivalents. Older bulls sport bright colors on their faces to display to conspecifics. Populations at different latitudes have differing amounts of body hair, being furrier in colder regions.
* The Puffrus, a semi-aquatic omnivore that spends most of its life at sea, feeding on marine plants and shellfish, but returns to land to breed as it is oviparous like most other non-therian therapsids, forming colonies on the shore where they guard their eggs in densely-clustered nests until hatching.
* The Spearbill, a plains-dwelling omnivore with a long beak that can be used to probe into burrows for small animals, break into insect nests like an anteater and pick up seeds and fruit-analogues. Its comb-like tusks are used for grooming, and its long limbs make it an adept runner.
* The Leazle, a small carnivore analogous to something between a mustelid and a monitor lizard, with a long body and short limbs ideal for chasing small prey down their burrows, both in the ground and up in tree trunks. A hooked beak and fang-like tusks help hold on to struggling prey.
Spectember 2025 Day 27: Phoenicopterusaurus lacustris
Phoenicopterusaurus lacustris is a 7 to 8-meter-long piscivorous relative of Allosaurus which inhabits the subtropical southwestern wetlands of Sekaia’s island continent of Aetherosia, which is home to a wide variety of other strange dinosaurs such as the brow horned-Carcharodontosaur Ceratovenator ferox, the herbivorous kangaroo-like Allosaurid Megapodosaurus gracilis, the tall-crested Lambeosaurine Lophosaurus magnificens, and the tall-spined Ankylosaur Spicosaurus. The “Hook-Jaw” is often seen around rivers and streams that are frequented by passing fish, and Its flamingo-shaped head, which is supported by a long, s-shaped neck, sports a long, downturned snout with a hook-shaped notch at the front which is useful for restraining captured slippery prey items and is brightly-colored with distinctive markings in order to attract any potential mates. The Phoenicopterusaurus was once widespread throughout its former range during the Fourth and Early Fifth Ages of Sekaia, when it was seen as a sacred water-magic creature by the Ancient Aetherosians and some of their descendants such as the Udolai, but it was nearly extirpated during the Arpanian-Thubanian War that began in the middle of the latter age on F.A. 1965 as the Goblins and Men destroyed much of its habitat, polluted the waters from where it drank and foraged, and consumed its eggs as a cheap source of protein, and the dinosaur’s population recovered to its former status soon after Keiko Yamamoto had fulfilled the Prophecy of the West and ushered in the peaceful Sixth Age.
A repost from what I did for my own version of Spectember 2025, originally I completed it on 23rd September 2025 and posted it elsewhere.
It is a giant whale alright, but since I realised that its gonna be autosized to 2048px, it should be easy to read if you do read it close, I'm very hesitant at times to actually bother writing down things so XD
Once home to a atrocious tribe of Long-extinct Harmsters, the desolate woodland has now evolved into a vast forest populated by various creatures, including the Wolfsters (Lycanocricetosapiens nocturnus) last known living descendant of the non-Riplet Ripperoos, and the Wood Riplets (Cricetualis gestaltiana) who have drifted into a cooperative lifestyle with the Altolopes.
Harmsters are fortunately extinct from this planet, as these killing machines, possessing every evil seen in humans, have led to the extinction of countless species. For example, the Hammoths, once widespread, now live only in North Westerna. All non-Meowse Carnohams have also disappeared. The Girats, a basal lineage of Hamtelopes, have become extinct, and their voids have been filled by their more advanced relatives, the Altolopes, a lineage of ungulopes. Similarly, marine predators feared by most creatures, such as Plurodon, and all non-Derelict Seaver species, have long since become extinct. However, just like humans (this time, not a tumor strain, but extinct due to resource conflicts and self-destruction), the Harmsters were unprepared for their own terrible end, and they too were a tumor strain that "zombified" their own kind. Now, that tumor strain has evolved into the Shroomors.
Meanwhile, neither Wolfsters nor Wood Riplets are behaving in such unnaturally extreme and brutal ways anymore, because over time their brains have developed and with the arrival of the decision-making mechanism, these species have evolved to behave just like nearly a normal human. And did you notice this picture on a huge stone here?
On this stone, an Eldtrich god killed a Harmster who once lived in this land by tearing off its arms and legs and taking it to a hell-like place. The reason is that some of the Harmsters resorted to massacre, thinking that the ancestors of the Wolfsters were similar to them, and this caused that ancestral wolfster species (and the living wolfsters) to fear and hate it, so this Eldtrich god killed a Harmster.
